Quiet tea, talky tea

Butsuma--a space for the Buddha. Chanoma--a space where people drink tea, eat, chat.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

US Performance Tour Nashville pt 2

We stayed at the Skerrit-Bennet Center in Nashville. It was formerly a university, in fact the first in the country to admit African-American women as students. I am not sure whether the university moved or closed, but anyway, the campus is now a good place for travelers on a budget. The entire campus is done in a fairly economical version of neo-gothic. The guest rooms are the dormitory rooms--a bit dingy, and most of them share a bath with one other room, causing lots of problems when the opposite party forgets to unlock the bathroom door. But certainly cheap, and free wi-fi in the central (used to be the library) building. It is adjacent to Vanderbilt U., and there are some restaurants (including the sushi place) and a CVS drug store that was also very convenient. There is also an old wooden building that was the first Methodist meeting house west of the Appalachians, the Strother Meeting House. The building has been moved around and used for various non-churchly purposes; now it is retired from active duty, and preserved as part of the campus.

In addition to Celebrate Nashville, we also performed at a few colleges/universities: Columbia College, Western Kentucky and Belmont. We got great support from Mrs. Grimes, a Japanese-born long-time resident of the area. She did a drop-in dance performance at Columbia, where she has been a Japanese language teacher. We had to use big vans to carry the ten of us to Columbia and Western Kentucky. However, Belmont is in town, not far from Skerrit-Bennet, so the vice-consul (I think that is what she is, but not sure) made two trips using her own car to take us over there. The last pic shows her with her Japanese-speaking staff member, Jennifer, and Ms. Grimes, as well as the dancers and musicians.